British Coins Research Articles

From Commodity to Colonial Currencies: A History of Money in the Former Sokoto Province of Nigeria during Pre-Colonial and Colonial Periods

Prior to the British conquest of Northern Nigeria in 1903, to which the former Sokoto Province area of Nigeria belonged, the region had an organised economy consisting of an agricultural system that produced not only foodstuffs but also raw materials and supplies for industries and international trade. There were systems of markets, taxation, credit, as well as local and long distance trade. There were also many kinds of currencies used as medium of exchange. The currencies are being referred to differently by various scholars. Some of the names given to them include: ‘commodity’, ‘trade’, ‘traditional’ or ‘local’ currencies. They include slaves, cloths, cowries, manilla, iron rods, silver, gold, Maria Theresa dollars, etc. Some of them had very limited areas in which they were used as currency while others were used over a vast area. Moreover, some of them such as slaves and cloth were locally sourced and had other uses than serving as currency. Others like cowries and silver dollars were obtained from far places such as Maldives Island in the Indian Ocean and various European and American countries respectively. However, when colonial rule was imposed on Africans, the colonial powers regarded the pre-colonial currencies not only as inefficient but also pernicious and then replaced them with colonial currencies. The colonial currencies were actually more portable, easily convertible and universally acceptable compared to the pre-colonial currencies. Thus, the British considered the pre-colonial currencies of the Nigerian area as ‘cumbersome’, which would not allow for international trade and incorporation of the country’s economy into that of the British capitalist economy. Consequently, the British coins were introduced and gradually they replaced the pre-colonial currencies as the only medium of exchange. This paper, therefore, examines the history of transition from the use of commodity to colonial currencies as media of exchange in the former Sokoto Province of Nigeria during the pre-colonial and colonial periods. Historical research methodology, through the use of primary and secondary sources, were employed to write the paper.

Corieltauvian ‘boar horse’ coin iconography as a precursor of medieval Celtic boar myths

This article suggests that an iconographic design found on early instances of a series of Iron Age British coins may foreshadow medieval Celtic myths about fantastic boar. Parallels are drawn with traditions about Balar’s boar, Cú Chulainn and Formáel’s boar, and with the Welsh episode of Menw and Twrch Trwyth.

The political significance of the coinage of the Irish Free State

This article examines the political context of the new Irish coinage that was introduced in 1928. It attempts to illustrate how the coins of the Irish Free State were products of the political circumstances of their time. The article also analyses the political negotiations concerning the future of the large quantity of British coins that remained in circulation in the Irish Free State. The conclusion will argue that the Irish coins issued in 1928 were of considerable political importance as symbols of national identity visible to the general public on a daily basis. Symbols of this nature were of particular significance to the Irish Free State because its status as a sovereign state was open to dispute in the 1920s and 1930s. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 made it clear that the Irish Free State was a Dominion of the British Empire. This article will argue that the political background to the introduction of the new Irish coins reflects wider controversies that dominated Irish politics and external relations in the years between the two world wars.

Shafer revisited – the three great oughts of winning the hearts and minds: analysing the assumptions underpinning the British and Dutch COIN approach in Helmand and Uruzgan

The comprehensive approach, also known as the integrated approach, is foundational to the strategies of the Western countries operating in south Afghanistan. It builds on the same premise as the hearts and minds (HAM) theory: by providing security and basic needs to the population, support is taken away from insurgents. The assumption that a (fragile) state will be able (with support of foreign troops and organisations) to provide basic services, security, and economic prosperity, which was questioned and critiqued by Michael Schafer over two decades ago, is still part of the contemporary concept and seems to remain uncontested. The objective of this article is to test Shafer's claims about the perseverance of what he coined ‘the deadly paradigms of counterinsurgency’ against the British and Dutch experiences in south Afghanistan starting in 2005.

Myth and the small war tradition: Reassessing the discourse of British counter-insurgency

In recent years a number of commentators have posited that the British reputation for conducting small wars has suffered in the wake of setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. The argument here contests whether such a tradition can be truly said to have ever existed. A close examination of this supposed tradition reveals it to be a myth. In fact, rarely have the British armed forces claimed a facility for counter-insurgency or small war. Invariably, commentators outside the Army have ascribed the tradition to them. Most notably, commentators in the United States keen to discern practices of minimum force or rapid institutional learning generated the narrative of British COIN expertise. Ultimately, what this myth reveals is that, when deconstructed, it is political will, not an ingrained understanding of fighting insurgencies, that has determined Britain's success, or otherwise, in so-called small wars.

Minimum force in British counterinsurgency

With strategic success in Iraq and Afghanistan far from certain, comforting beliefs about Britain's superiority at counterinsurgency have come under increasingly sceptical scrutiny. This article contributes to the debate with particular reference to the supposedly pivotal principle of minimum force. After discussing the recent literature on the subject, the article critiques the methodology employed by advocates of the traditionalist view on British COIN, arguing for a more rigorous historical approach based on primary sources. Following these historical matters, it is argued that conceptually, minimum force should be analysed dialectically in relation to practices of exemplary force, and above all, on the evidence of what happens in a conflict. Arguably the value ascribed to doctrine in strategic analysis has become unduly inflated, and we must look beyond it to understand war and political violence.

COIN Machine: The British Military in Afghanistan

This article assesses the British military effort in Afghanistan looking at three key elements in the campaign: strategy, military operations, and the inter-agency “Comprehensive Approach.” We start by recognising the scale of the challenge that has faced the British: of all the provinces in Afghanistan, Helmand is the toughest to stabilize and secure. We then examine the evolution of all three elements above and find significant improvements in each: a flawed strategy has been corrected; the military have received more resources and become significantly better at COIN; and there is significant progress in the development of the inter-agency approach. In short, what the Americans will find in Helmand is a British COIN machine; a little creaky perhaps, but one that is fit for purpose and getting the job done. We briefly conclude on the prospects and the key to success: namely the development of a more coherent international strategy that accommodates the challenges posed by both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles. Vol. LII: Uppsala University Coin Cabinet; Anglo-Saxon and Later British Coins

Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles. Vol. LII: Uppsala University Coin Cabinet; Anglo-Saxon and Later British Coins

Inflation and the estimated size of withdrawn notes and coins

This study extends research by Lea [J. Econ. Psychol. 1 (1981) 79] and Furnham [J. Econ. Psychol. 4 (1983) 349] by getting 100 British adults to estimate the size of two British coins and one note withdrawn from circulation approximately 5 years previously. Participants were very accurate at estimating the £1 note but under-estimated the size of the old 5p and 10p coins. Estimations were not linked to participant’s sex, age, education or income. Implications for the design, introduction and withdraw of currency are considered.

Handedness dependency in recall from everyday memory.

A number of previous studies have demonstrated systematic misremembering of the direction in which the Queen's head faces on British coins. Two experiments were carried out to investigate whether this phenomenon is affected by a person's handedness. In both experiments, right-handed and left-handed participants were found to differ significantly in their verbal responses, with recall performance significantly worse than chance for right-handed but not for left-handed participants. Experiment 2 also examined degrees of handedness, and found significant variation in recall across the handedness range. Performance in this everyday-memory paradigm appears to be determined by both handedness and schema factors. It is proposed that although in this task the response was verbal one, relevant motor imagery may nevertheless have been activated and led to the highly unusual observation of an effect of handedness upon cognitive performance.

Trade and Discovery: The Scientific Study of Artefacts from, Post-Medieval Europe and Beyond ed. by Duncan R. Hook, David R. M. Gaimster

750 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Trade and Discovery: The Scientific Study of Artefactsfrom, Post-Medieval Europe and Beyond. Edited by Duncan R. Hook and David R. M. Gaimster. London: The British Museum, 1995. Pp. 326; illustra­ tions, figures, tables, notes. (Price not available.) This volume presents twenty-four studies chosen from papers pre­ sented at a conference held at the British Museum in 1992, intended to show what archaeology and materials science can contribute to our understanding of trade in the era of discovery. Some studies are content to present scientific data on copper or glass from artifacts discovered at a given site, without providing a context from literature on the history of trade, and will thus attract the notice only of special­ ists. More interesting are the articles that do draw on different schol­ arly fields, especially those involving evidence of transoceanic trade. These fall into two main categories: some draw out the implications ofthe presence of certain artifacts at certain sites, others rely on new techniques that offer precise measurements of minute trace ele­ ments to determine the provenance of key materials. Among the essays that focus on the presence of artifacts is a study of European artifacts found at La Isabela, the first and short-lived Spanish settlement on Santo Domingo (1493-98). K. Deagan and J. M. Cruxent note that five years was apparently long enough for characteristically Spanish cooking vessels to give way to native coun­ terparts; the absence of water wheels, so ubiquitous in Spain at the time, may point to a dependence on slave labor. William R. Fitzger­ ald paints an interesting picture of the Gulf of St. Lawrence trade in furs, which spurted to new levels around 1580, stimulated by a rising European demand for beaver. The provenance of trade goods can be traced in the notarial records of French ports, copper ketdes of Basque origin giving way after a time to those of Flemish or Ger­ man manufacture; both types have been found as far inland as Ohio and southern Ontario, giving some idea of the range of native trade routes. In a broader study of French stoneware unearthed at sites in northeastern North America, Jean-Pierre Chrestien and Daniel Dufournier find confirmation for developments suggested by the European evidence; for example, the appearance ofFrench ceramic butter pots in the 18th century points to the apparent interruption of the traditional, wooden-cask trade in butter from Ireland to Brit­ tany. In the second group of essays, Bernard Gratuze and three col­ leagues discuss “The Origin ofCobalt Blue Pigments in French Glass from the Thirteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries.” Trace elements revealed by “instrumental fast neutron activation techniques,” matched against mining records, permit identification of two cobalt ores of Saxon origin, one extracted along with zinc and lead at Frei­ berg (13th to 15th centuries), another from new techniques of co­ balt mining at Schneeberg (16th to 18th centuries). The authors’ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 751 suggestion that pre-13th-century cobalt blue glass involved a reuse of Roman materials is an interesting indicator of how late it was that medieval Europe cast off its ancient moorings. Also with several col­ leagues, Jean-Noël Barandon uses chemical analysis to quantify the importance of Potosi silver and Brazilian gold in the coinages of early modern Europe; for example, nine of eleven coins minted in Spain under Philip II (1556-98) contain silver from Potosi, while an estimated 61 percent of the gold in British coins of the first half of the 18th century came from Brazil. The macroeconomic implica­ tions of these data will be explored in a later study. In a study by P. T. Craddock and D. R. Hook, chemical analysis is used to shed some light on the provenance of copper used in largely undated West African bronze artifacts; local origin is indicated for the 9th to 11th centuries, and the composition of sample external copper sources comes from a trans-Saharan caravan that came to grief in the 12th century and from a Portuguese shipwreck of 1527. Here there is, however, a rare glitch in coverage of the historical record: Hungarian copper came to Antwerp not...

Early Metal Mining and Production by Paul T. Craddock

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 751 suggestion that pre-13th-century cobalt blue glass involved a reuse of Roman materials is an interesting indicator of how late it was that medieval Europe cast off its ancient moorings. Also with several col­ leagues, Jean-Noël Barandon uses chemical analysis to quantify the importance of Potosi silver and Brazilian gold in the coinages of early modern Europe; for example, nine of eleven coins minted in Spain under Philip II (1556-98) contain silver from Potosi, while an estimated 61 percent of the gold in British coins of the first half of the 18th century came from Brazil. The macroeconomic implica­ tions of these data will be explored in a later study. In a study by P. T. Craddock and D. R. Hook, chemical analysis is used to shed some light on the provenance of copper used in largely undated West African bronze artifacts; local origin is indicated for the 9th to 11th centuries, and the composition of sample external copper sources comes from a trans-Saharan caravan that came to grief in the 12th century and from a Portuguese shipwreck of 1527. Here there is, however, a rare glitch in coverage of the historical record: Hungarian copper came to Antwerp not “across Europe” or down the Rhine, but by way of the Vistula, the Baltic, and the Low Coun­ tries’ inland waterways. Archaeology can be especially valuable in regard to the smaller trades that helped stitch trade networks together without leaving much trace in the documentary record. Here, for traffic between Europe and China in the 18th century, Mark Redknap and two col­ leagues show by chemical analysis of little-known glass ingots from a shipwrecked East Indiaman that this material was evidently prized by Chinese glaziers, while Brian Gilmour and Eldon Worrall show how European metal craftsmen had a similar interest in Chinese nickel brass (“patkong”), until local forges began production of the alloy early in the 19th century. In general, the scholars represented here are careful to check their findings against the historical record; this collection is a useful indication of what is to be gained if historians of trade would begin doing the same for the archaeological record. James D. Tracy Dr. Tracy teaches in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota. His books include studies ofErasmus and the political history of the Low Countries, and edited volumes on world trade. Early Metal Mining and Production. By Paul T. Craddock. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Pp. xix+363; illustra­ tions, figures, tables, bibliography, index. $59.00 (cloth). Fifteen years ago no more than a dozen or so scientists and engi­ neers working in their spare time carried on most of the world’s 752 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE research in archaeometallurgy. They published altogether a few pa­ pers each year and the occasional book. In 1995, however, scholars, many with full-time support from museums, from research institu­ tions, and, in Europe, from several corporations, produced well over a thousand pages in conference volumes and research papers on archaeological and historical metallurgy. Some of this research was driven by national pride and some by the display opportunities that museum designers find in earlyjewelry and weapons. A more impor­ tant reason was the archaeologists’ and historians’ realization that metals retain within them much information about how they were made and used, information not otherwise available, that can shed light on past peoples’ cultures. Synthesis of the plethora of research results from the past decade is a daunting task that Paul T. Craddock is particularly well qualified to undertake because of his research at many important mining and metalworking localities in the Old World, and because of the work of the archaeometallurgy laboratory he directs at the British Mu­ seum. He brings to his writing a thorough knowledge of the exten­ sive, widely scattered literature of archaeometallurgy coupled with a remarkable ability to accurately explain the basic principles under­ lying metallurgical processes in terms that will be accessible to most readers. Craddock has given us a succinct, worldwide overview ofthe results of archaeometallurgical research. Early Metal Mining and Production covers metallurgy from earliest times through...

The influence of coins on the growth of duckweed

The influences of a British one-pence coin and a Japanese ten-yen coin on the growth of duckweed were studied. These coins inhibited the growth of duckweed It is well known that copper inhibits the growth of plants, but there are few good materials to demonstrate this fact to students. We used a British one-pence and a Japanese ten-yen coin instead of copper, because they are made mainly of copper. Duckweed serves as an indicator plant, for it could easily be collected and its frond number would increase over a short period, i.e. one or two weeks. The growth could be evaluated by counting the number of fronds. Both coins inhibited the growth of duckweed. Spirodela died in a solution containing a penny after 10 days' culture, and after nine days with a ten-yen coin. The growth curve of Lemna is very similar to Spirodela. From these results, the coin and duckweed investigations were considered to be suitable materials for use in environmental education.

Danegeld remembered: taxing further the coin head illusion.

Two experiments studied memory for the appearance of a Danish 20 kroner coin. The coin bears the portrait of Queen Margrethe II in profile, facing to the right. Previous studies have examined memory for British coins, which similarly bear a right-facing portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. They have revealed the occurrence of a mnemonic illusion, in that British people tend to believe the portrait faces left. This finding has been attributed to the occurrence of a joint coin-stamp schema. British stamps bear a left-facing profile of the Queen, and it is possible that information from the stamp predominates in the formation of the schema. In the case of Denmark, however, stamps bear a full-face portrait of the Queen. Nevertheless, the present experiments showed that the Coin Head Illusion is also found in Denmark. That is, the number of participants recalling the Queen's head as facing to the right was significantly below even the chance level of 50%. Further, this result occurred both for residents of Denmark and for visitors to Denmark. These findings suggest that the bias underlying the Coin Head Illusion may be a more general one than that envisaged by the joint coin-stamp schema hypothesis.

Economy within an Economy: the Manilla Currency, Exchange Rate Instability and Social Conditions in South-Eastern Nigeria, 1900–48

This paper studies the effects of the coexistence of the manilla currency and British currency in south-eastern Nigeria, and the way in which this monetary situation created political tensions which eventually led to the redemption of the manilla. When British control of Southern Nigeria was formalized in 1900 and British currency introduced in the south-east in the following year, the inability of the colonial authorities to put into circulation adequate supplies of British coins, coupled with historically entrenched use of traditional currencies, compelled the colonial state to recognize the latter as legal tender. However, the continuing circulation of these currencies alongside British coins created financial and economic difficulties, causing the colonial state to adopt a number of legislative measures to eradicate them. While other traditional currencies capitulated to these measures, the manilla continued to be popular as a result of objective economic factors, and was strengthened by some of the very instruments designed to eliminate it.Meanwhile, the constantly fluctuating exchange rate of the manilla was generating discontent. These fluctuations were caused primarily by the gyrations of the world market. Improved prices of palm products–the main sources of British currency in the economy of southeastern Nigeria–brought about the appreciation of the manilla. This caused hardship among wage-earners by reducing the exchange value and the purchasing power of their meagre and fixed income which had to be converted to manillas in order to buy food and other locally produced goods and services. Periods of depression, on the other hand, caused manilla depreciation as a result of a diminished inflow of British currency. This reduced the income of peasant producers, while increasing the purchasing power of workers. The ferments generated by fluctuating manilla values have remained, until now, unidentified causal links in the political movements in south-eastern Nigeria, including especially the women's movements of the 1920s.The discontent intensified in the 1940s, when the influx of cash into the Nigerian economy caused by war-time military spending and the post-war commodity boom caused a continuous appreciation of the manilla. This development made life more difficult for workers, whose incomes were already being decimated by inflation. The resulting intensified political tension, as well as the existing obstacles to trade and smooth collection of taxes (also caused by unabating manilla fluctuations), made the demonetization of the manilla through redemption inevitable. With the elimination of the manilla, which had constituted a sub-system within the economic system of colonial Nigeria, the colonial state's economic control of Nigeria can be said to have been completed.

Remembering the appearance of familiar objects: A study of monarchic memory

Two experiments were conducted to assess people’s ability to remember the orientation of the monarch’s profile on contemporary British coins. Experiment 1 confirmed that, when particular coins are drawn from memory, the likelihood of the Queen’s head being drawn incorrectly as facing to the left was greater than chance. However, an identical bias appeared when other British subjects were simply asked to draw a female human profile. In Experiment 2, British subjects were asked to describe the orientation of the Queen’s head on both coins and postage stamps. Most people were accurate in describing a 20-pence stamp but inaccurate in describing a 20-pence coin. The detailed findings indicated that many British people have a general schema for objects bearing the head of the monarch that is based primarily on their experience with postage stamps, but which is activated when they are asked to retrieve information about coins.

Misremembering a familiar object: Mnemonic illusion, not drawing bias

It was reported by Jones (1990) that the design of British coins is systematically misremembered. Although the Queen's head in fact faces right, most people draw it facing left. It is possible, however, that the origin of this phenomenon does not reside in memory but instead in a leftward drawing bias. Two experiments of the three reported here tested this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, British participants attempted to recall the direction of the Queen's head but responded verbally instead of pictorially. The results were similar to those of Jones and thus contradict the hypothesis that misremembering of the Queen's head is caused by a leftward drawing bias. In Experiment 2, Canadian participants attempted to draw a Canadian coin. Leftward misremembering was not observed in this case. Thus the hypothesized importance of a leftward drawing bias was again not supported. Instead, the results provided support for the schema explanation of the Queen's Head memory illusion proposed by Jones. The results of Experiment 3, which compared memory for British coins and stamps, further bolstered this conclusion.

Misremembering a common object: When left is not right

Three experiments were carried out to investigate people's memory for British coins. Two principal issues were studied. First, it has previously been shown that memory for U.S. pennies and other coins is surprisingly imperfect. How do other countries compare? It turned out that recall of the design of British pennies was, if anything, worse even than that of U.S. pennies. The situation was no better for a larger coin with an unusual shape. It is suggested that individual features are poorly remembered if they have low levels of meaningfulness, redundancy, identifiability, and discriminativeness. Second, in addition to this generally weak level of remembering, an instance of systematic misremembering was consistently observed. The Queen's portrait always faces to the right on British coins. Yet in all three experiments, the proportion of participants who recalled that the portrait faces to the right was so low (overall, 19%) that it was significantly less than even the 50% baseline to be expected from people in a state of complete ignorance. It follows that the participants were not in a state of complete ignorance. Rather, they relied upon extraneous knowledge of either a general or a specific nature (bias and schema hypotheses, respectively), whose importation into this domain was in fact invalid. The resulting belief that coin portraits face left was not right.

Coin Identification and Relative Value: A Training Programme for Adults with Mental Handicap

The five participants in this study were adult long-term residents of institutions for people with mental handicap who had only rudimentary numerical and monetary skills. All were successfully trained, using methods based on “errorless stimulus fading” techniques within a multiple-baseline experimental design, to recognize the seven British coin types and to judge their relative value. Recognition training incidentally resulted in ability to name the coins. Training at each skill required four to seven sessions of up to 20 minutes each, at intervals of 24 hours or more. Performance remained accurate at three-week and six-month follow-up. In four out of five subjects, improvement at recognition could be attributed specifically to the training sequence.

The Perceived Value of Small Coins

Abstract This study was concerned with the picking up of small coins as an unobtrusive measure of their perceived worth. Five sets of the four least valuable British coins were placed (“lost”) in a country town. Five pairs of observers noted the approximate age and sex of those 100 passersby who, having seen the coin, either did or did not pick it up. The results showed that the probability of a person picking up and keeping a “lost” coin increased linearly with its worth.